Tag: Cloud

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Getting started with GKE – Google Kubernetes Engine

I have not spend much time with Google Cloud Platform because I have used mostly AWS cloud services like EKS but I wanted to give Google’s GKE – Kubernetes Engine a try to compare both offerings. My first impression is great about how easy it is to create a cluster and to enable options for NetworkPolicy or Istio Service Mesh without the need to manually install these compare to AWS EKS.

The GKE integration into the cloud offering is perfect, there is no need for a Kubernetes dashboard or custom monitoring / logging solutions, all is nicely integrated into the Google cloud services and can be used straight away once you created the cluster.

I created a new project called Kubernetes for deploying the GKE cluster. The command you see below creates a GKE cluster with the defined settings and options, and I really like the simplicity of a single command to create and manage the cluster similar like eksctl does:

gcloud beta container --project "kubernetes-xxxxxx" clusters create "cluster-1" \
  --region "europe-west1" \
  --no-enable-basic-auth \
  --cluster-version "1.15.4-gke.22" \
  --machine-type "n1-standard-2" \
  --image-type "COS" \
  --disk-type "pd-standard" \
  --disk-size "100" \
  --metadata disable-legacy-endpoints=true \
  --scopes "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_only","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/logging.write","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/monitoring","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/servicecontrol","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/service.management.readonly","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/trace.append" \
  --num-nodes "1" \
  --enable-stackdriver-kubernetes \
  --enable-ip-alias \
  --network "projects/kubernetes-xxxxxx/global/networks/default" \
  --subnetwork "projects/kubernetes-xxxxxx/regions/europe-west1/subnetworks/default" \
  --default-max-pods-per-node "110" \
  --enable-network-policy \
  --addons HorizontalPodAutoscaling,HttpLoadBalancing,Istio \
  --istio-config auth=MTLS_PERMISSIVE \
  --enable-autoupgrade \
  --enable-autorepair \
  --maintenance-window-start "2019-12-29T00:00:00Z" \
  --maintenance-window-end "2019-12-30T00:00:00Z" \
  --maintenance-window-recurrence "FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=MO,TU,WE,TH,FR,SA,SU" \
  --enable-vertical-pod-autoscaling

With the gcloud command you can authenticate and generate a kubeconfig file for your cluster and start using kubectl directly to deploy your applications.

gcloud beta container clusters get-credentials cluster-1 --region europe-west1 --project kubernetes-xxxxxx

There is no need for a Kubernetes dashboard what I have mentioned because it is integrated into the Google Kubernetes Engine console. You are able to see cluster information and deployed workloads, and you are able to drill down to detailed information about running pods:

Google is offering the Kubernetes control-plane for free and which is a massive advantage for GKE because AWS on the other hand charges for the EKS control-plane around $144 per month.

You can keep your GKE control-plane running and scale down your instance pool to zero if no compute capacity is needed and scale up later if required:

# scale down node pool
gcloud container clusters resize cluster-1 --num-nodes=0 --region "europe-west1"

# scale up node pool 
gcloud container clusters resize cluster-1 --num-nodes=1 --region "europe-west1"

Let’s deploy the Google microservices demo application with Istio Service Mesh enabled:

# label default namespace to inject Envoy sidecar
kubectl label namespace default istio-injection=enabled

# check istio sidecar injector label
kubectl get namespace -L istio-injection

# deploy Google microservices demo manifests
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/microservices-demo/master/kubernetes-manifests/hipster-shop.yml
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/microservices-demo/master/istio-manifests/istio.yml

Get the public IP addresses for the frontend service and ingress gateway to connect with your browser:

# get frontend-external service IP address
kubectl get svc frontend-external --no-headers | awk '{ print $4 }'

# get istio ingress gateway service IP address
kubectl get svc istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system --no-headers | awk '{ print $4 }'

To delete the GKE cluster simply run the following gcloud command:

gcloud beta container --project "kubernetes-xxxxxx" clusters delete "cluster-1" --region "europe-west1"

Googles Kubernetes Engine is in my opinion the better offering compared to AWS EKS which seems a bit too basic.

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Create and manage AWS EKS cluster using eksctl command-line

A few month back I stumbled across the Weave.works command-line tool eksctl.io to create and manage AWS EKS clusters. Amazon recently announced eksctl.io is the official command-line tool for managing AWS EKS clusters. It follows a similar approach what we have seen with the new openshift-installer to create an OpenShift 4 cluster or with the Google Cloud Shell to create a GKE cluster with a single command and I really like the simplicity of these tools.

Before we start creating a EKS cluster, see below the IAM user policy to set the required permissions for eksctl.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor0",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:CreateInstanceProfile",
                "iam:DeleteInstanceProfile",
                "iam:GetRole",
                "iam:GetInstanceProfile",
                "iam:RemoveRoleFromInstanceProfile",
                "iam:CreateRole",
                "iam:DeleteRole",
                "iam:AttachRolePolicy",
                "iam:PutRolePolicy",
                "iam:ListInstanceProfiles",
                "iam:AddRoleToInstanceProfile",
                "iam:ListInstanceProfilesForRole",
                "iam:PassRole",
                "iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole",
                "iam:DetachRolePolicy",
                "iam:DeleteRolePolicy",
                "iam:DeleteServiceLinkedRole",
                "ec2:DeleteInternetGateway",
                "iam:GetOpenIDConnectProvider",
                "iam:GetRolePolicy"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:iam::552276840222:instance-profile/eksctl-*",
                "arn:aws:iam::552276840222:oidc-provider/oidc.eks*",
                "arn:aws:iam::552276840222:role/eksctl-*",
                "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:internet-gateway/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor1",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress",
                "ec2:DeleteSubnet",
                "ec2:AttachInternetGateway",
                "ec2:DeleteRouteTable",
                "ec2:AssociateRouteTable",
                "ec2:DescribeInternetGateways",
                "autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups",
                "ec2:CreateRoute",
                "ec2:CreateInternetGateway",
                "ec2:RevokeSecurityGroupEgress",
                "autoscaling:UpdateAutoScalingGroup",
                "ec2:DeleteInternetGateway",
                "ec2:DescribeKeyPairs",
                "ec2:DescribeRouteTables",
                "ec2:ImportKeyPair",
                "ec2:DescribeLaunchTemplates",
                "ec2:CreateTags",
                "ec2:CreateRouteTable",
                "ec2:RunInstances",
                "cloudformation:*",
                "ec2:DetachInternetGateway",
                "ec2:DisassociateRouteTable",
                "ec2:RevokeSecurityGroupIngress",
                "ec2:DescribeImageAttribute",
                "ec2:DeleteNatGateway",
                "autoscaling:DeleteAutoScalingGroup",
                "ec2:DeleteVpc",
                "ec2:CreateSubnet",
                "ec2:DescribeSubnets",
                "eks:*",
                "autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup",
                "ec2:DescribeAddresses",
                "ec2:DeleteTags",
                "ec2:CreateNatGateway",
                "autoscaling:DescribeLaunchConfigurations",
                "ec2:CreateVpc",
                "ec2:DescribeVpcAttribute",
                "autoscaling:DescribeScalingActivities",
                "ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones",
                "ec2:CreateSecurityGroup",
                "ec2:ModifyVpcAttribute",
                "ec2:ReleaseAddress",
                "ec2:AuthorizeSecurityGroupEgress",
                "ec2:DeleteLaunchTemplate",
                "ec2:DescribeTags",
                "ec2:DeleteRoute",
                "ec2:DescribeLaunchTemplateVersions",
                "elasticloadbalancing:*",
                "ec2:DescribeNatGateways",
                "ec2:AllocateAddress",
                "ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups",
                "autoscaling:CreateLaunchConfiguration",
                "ec2:DescribeImages",
                "ec2:CreateLaunchTemplate",
                "autoscaling:DeleteLaunchConfiguration",
                "iam:ListOpenIDConnectProviders",
                "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
                "ec2:DeleteSecurityGroup"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Now let’s create the EKS cluster with the following command:

$ eksctl create cluster --name=cluster-1 --region=eu-west-1 --nodes=3 --auto-kubeconfig
[ℹ]  eksctl version 0.10.2
[ℹ]  using region eu-west-1
[ℹ]  setting availability zones to [eu-west-1a eu-west-1c eu-west-1b]
[ℹ]  subnets for eu-west-1a - public:192.168.0.0/19 private:192.168.96.0/19
[ℹ]  subnets for eu-west-1c - public:192.168.32.0/19 private:192.168.128.0/19
[ℹ]  subnets for eu-west-1b - public:192.168.64.0/19 private:192.168.160.0/19
[ℹ]  nodegroup "ng-b17ac84f" will use "ami-059c6874350e63ca9" [AmazonLinux2/1.14]
[ℹ]  using Kubernetes version 1.14
[ℹ]  creating EKS cluster "cluster-1" in "eu-west-1" region
[ℹ]  will create 2 separate CloudFormation stacks for cluster itself and the initial nodegroup
[ℹ]  if you encounter any issues, check CloudFormation console or try 'eksctl utils describe-stacks --region=eu-west-1 --cluster=cluster-1'
[ℹ]  CloudWatch logging will not be enabled for cluster "cluster-1" in "eu-west-1"
[ℹ]  you can enable it with 'eksctl utils update-cluster-logging --region=eu-west-1 --cluster=cluster-1'
[ℹ]  Kubernetes API endpoint access will use default of {publicAccess=true, privateAccess=false} for cluster "cluster-1" in "eu-west-1"
[ℹ]  2 sequential tasks: { create cluster control plane "cluster-1", create nodegroup "ng-b17ac84f" }
[ℹ]  building cluster stack "eksctl-cluster-1-cluster"
[ℹ]  deploying stack "eksctl-cluster-1-cluster"
[ℹ]  building nodegroup stack "eksctl-cluster-1-nodegroup-ng-b17ac84f"
[ℹ]  --nodes-min=3 was set automatically for nodegroup ng-b17ac84f
[ℹ]  --nodes-max=3 was set automatically for nodegroup ng-b17ac84f
[ℹ]  deploying stack "eksctl-cluster-1-nodegroup-ng-b17ac84f"
[✔]  all EKS cluster resources for "cluster-1" have been created
[✔]  saved kubeconfig as "/home/ubuntu/.kube/eksctl/clusters/cluster-1"
[ℹ]  adding identity "arn:aws:iam::xxxxxxxxxx:role/eksctl-cluster-1-nodegroup-ng-b17-NodeInstanceRole-1DK2K493T8OM7" to auth ConfigMap
[ℹ]  nodegroup "ng-b17ac84f" has 0 node(s)
[ℹ]  waiting for at least 3 node(s) to become ready in "ng-b17ac84f"
[ℹ]  nodegroup "ng-b17ac84f" has 3 node(s)
[ℹ]  node "ip-192-168-5-192.eu-west-1.compute.internal" is ready
[ℹ]  node "ip-192-168-62-86.eu-west-1.compute.internal" is ready
[ℹ]  node "ip-192-168-64-47.eu-west-1.compute.internal" is ready
[ℹ]  kubectl command should work with "/home/ubuntu/.kube/eksctl/clusters/cluster-1", try 'kubectl --kubeconfig=/home/ubuntu/.kube/eksctl/clusters/cluster-1 get nodes'
[✔]  EKS cluster "cluster-1" in "eu-west-1" region is ready

Alternatively there is the option to create the EKS cluster in an existing VPC without eksctl creating the full-stack, you are required to specify the subnet IDs for private and public subnets:

eksctl create cluster --name=cluster-1 --region=eu-west-1 --nodes=3 \
       --vpc-private-subnets=subnet-0ff156e0c4a6d300c,subnet-0426fb4a607393184,subnet-0426fb4a604827314 \
       --vpc-public-subnets=subnet-0153e560b3129a696,subnet-009fa0199ec203c37,subnet-0426fb4a412393184

The option –auto-kubeconfig stores the kubeconfig under the users home directory in ~/.kube/eksctl/clusters/<-cluster-name-> or you can obtain cluster credentials at any point in time with the following command:

$ eksctl utils write-kubeconfig --cluster=cluster-1
[ℹ]  eksctl version 0.10.2
[ℹ]  using region eu-west-1
[✔]  saved kubeconfig as "/home/ubuntu/.kube/config"

Using kubectl to connect and manage the EKS cluster:

$ kubectl get nodes
NAME                                          STATUS   ROLES    AGE     VERSION
ip-192-168-5-192.eu-west-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>   3m42s   v1.14.7-eks-1861c5
ip-192-168-62-86.eu-west-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>   3m43s   v1.14.7-eks-1861c5
ip-192-168-64-47.eu-west-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>   3m41s   v1.14.7-eks-1861c5

You are able to view the created EKS clusters:

$ eksctl get clusters
NAME		REGION
cluster-1	eu-west-1

As easy it is to create an EKS cluster you can also delete the cluster with a single command:

$ eksctl delete cluster --name=cluster-1 --region=eu-west-1
[ℹ]  eksctl version 0.10.2
[ℹ]  using region eu-west-1
[ℹ]  deleting EKS cluster "cluster-1"
[✔]  kubeconfig has been updated
[ℹ]  cleaning up LoadBalancer services
[ℹ]  2 sequential tasks: { delete nodegroup "ng-b17ac84f", delete cluster control plane "cluster-1" [async] }
[ℹ]  will delete stack "eksctl-cluster-1-nodegroup-ng-b17ac84f"
[ℹ]  waiting for stack "eksctl-cluster-1-nodegroup-ng-b17ac84f" to get deleted
[ℹ]  will delete stack "eksctl-cluster-1-cluster"
[✔]  all cluster resources were deleted

I can only recommend checking out eksctl.io because it has lot of potentials and the move towards an GitOps model to manage EKS clusters in a declarative way using a cluster manifests or hopefully in the future an eksctld operator to do the job. RedHat is working on a similar tool for OpenShift 4 called OpenShift Hive which I will write about very soon.

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Running Istio Service Mesh on Amazon EKS

I have not spend too much time with Istio in the last weeks but after my previous article about running Istio Service Mesh on OpenShift I wanted to do the same and deploy Istio Service Mesh on an Amazon EKS cluster. This time I did the recommended way of using a helm template to deploy Istio which is more flexible then the Ansible operator for the OpenShift deployment.

Once you have created your EKS cluster you can start, there are not many prerequisite for EKS so you can basically create the istio namespace and create a secret for Kiali, and start to deploy the helm template:

kubectl create namespace istio-system

USERNAME=$(echo -n 'admin' | base64)
PASSPHRASE=$(echo -n 'supersecretpassword!!' | base64)
NAMESPACE=istio-system

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -n istio-system -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: kiali
  namespace: $NAMESPACE
  labels:
    app: kiali
type: Opaque
data:
  username: $USERNAME
  passphrase: $PASSPHRASE
EOF

You then create the Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) for Istio:

helm template istio-1.1.4/install/kubernetes/helm/istio-init --name istio-init --namespace istio-system | kubectl apply -f -  

# Check the created Istio CRDs 
kubectl get crds -n istio-system | grep 'istio.io\|certmanager.k8s.io' | wc -l

At this point you can deploy the main Istio Helm template. See the installation options for more detail about customizing the installation:

helm template istio-1.1.4/install/kubernetes/helm/istio --name istio --namespace istio-system  --set grafana.enabled=true --set tracing.enabled=true --set kiali.enabled=true --set kiali.dashboard.secretName=kiali --set kiali.dashboard.usernameKey=username --set kiali.dashboard.passphraseKey=passphrase | kubectl apply -f -
 
# Validate and see that all components start
kubectl get pods -n istio-system -w

The Kiali service has the type clusterIP which we need to change to type LoadBalancer:

kubectl patch svc kiali -n istio-system --patch '{"spec": {"type": "LoadBalancer" }}'

# Get the create AWS ELB for the Kiali service
$ kubectl get svc kiali -n istio-system --no-headers | awk '{ print $4 }'
abbf8224773f111e99e8a066e034c3d4-78576474.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com

Now we are able to access the Kiali dashboard and login with the credentials I have specified earlier in the Kiali secret.

We didn’t deploy anything else yet so the default namespace is empty:

I recommend having a look at the Istio-Sidecar injection. If your istio-sidecar containers are not getting deployed you might forgot to allow TCP port 443 from your control-plane to worker nodes. Have a look at the Github issue about this: Admission control webhooks (e.g. sidecar injector) don’t work on EKS.

We can continue and deploy the Google Hipster Shop example.

# Label default namespace to inject Envoy sidecar
kubectl label namespace default istio-injection=enabled

# Check istio sidecar injector label
kubectl get namespace -L istio-injection

# Deploy Google hipster shop manifests
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/aws-eks-terraform/master/example/istio-hipster-shop.yml
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/aws-eks-terraform/master/example/istio-manifest.yml

# Wait a few minutes before deploying the load generator
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/aws-eks-terraform/master/example/istio-loadgenerator.yml

We can check again the Kiali dashboard once the application is deployed and healthy. If there are issues with the Envoy sidecar you will see a warning “Missing Sidecar”:

We are also able to see the graph which shows detailed traffic flows within the microservice application.

Let’s get the hostname for the istio-ingressgateway service and connect via the web browser:

$ kubectl get svc istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system --no-headers | awk '{ print $4 }'
a16f7090c74ca11e9a1fb02cd763ca9e-362893117.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com

Before you destroy your EKS cluster you should remove all installed components because Kubernetes service type LoadBalancer created AWS ELBs which will not get deleted and stay behind when you delete the EKS cluster:

kubectl label namespace default istio-injection-
kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/aws-eks-terraform/master/example/istio-loadgenerator.yml
kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/aws-eks-terraform/master/example/istio-hipster-shop.yml
kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/aws-eks-terraform/master/example/istio-manifest.yml

Finally to remove Istio from EKS you run the same Helm template command but do kubectl delete:

helm template istio-1.1.4/install/kubernetes/helm/istio --name istio --namespace istio-system  --set grafana.enabled=true --set tracing.enabled=true --set kiali.enabled=true --set kiali.dashboard.secretName=kiali --set kiali.dashboard.usernameKey=username --set kiali.dashboard.passphraseKey=passphrase | kubectl delete -f -

Very simple to get started with Istio Service Mesh on EKS and if I find some time I will give the Istio Multicluster a try and see how this works to span Istio service mesh across multiple Kubernetes clusters.

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Create Amazon EKS cluster using Terraform

I have found AWS EKS introduction on the HashiCorp learning portal and thought I’d give it a try and test the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services. Using cloud native container services like EKS is getting more popular and makes it easier for everyone running a Kubernetes cluster and start deploying container straight away without the overhead of maintaining and patching the control-plane and leave this to AWS.

Creating the EKS cluster is pretty easy by just running terraform apply. The only prerequisite is to have kubectl and AWS IAM authenticator installed. You find the terraform files on my repository https://github.com/berndonline/aws-eks-terraform

# Initializing and create EKS cluster
terraform init
terraform apply  

# Generate kubeconfig and configmap for adding worker nodes
terraform output kubeconfig > ./kubeconfig
terraform output config_map_aws_auth > ./config_map_aws_auth.yaml

# Apply configmap for worker nodes to join the cluster
export KUBECONFIG=./kubeconfig
kubectl apply -f ./config_map_aws_auth.yaml
kubectl get nodes --watch

Let’s have a look at the AWS EKS console:

In the cluster details you see general information:

On the EC2 side you see two worker nodes as defined:

Now we can deploy an example application:

$ kubectl create -f example/hello-kubernetes.yml
service/hello-kubernetes created
deployment.apps/hello-kubernetes created
ingress.extensions/hello-ingress created

Checking that the pods are running and the correct resources are created:

$ kubectl get all
NAME                                   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/hello-kubernetes-b75555c67-4fhfn   1/1     Running   0          1m
pod/hello-kubernetes-b75555c67-pzmlw   1/1     Running   0          1m

NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP                                                              PORT(S)        AGE
service/hello-kubernetes   LoadBalancer   172.20.108.223   ac1dc1ab84e5c11e9ab7e0211179d9b9-394134490.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com   80:32043/TCP   1m
service/kubernetes         ClusterIP      172.20.0.1                                                                                443/TCP        26m

NAME                               DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/hello-kubernetes   2         2         2            2           1m

NAME                                         DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/hello-kubernetes-b75555c67   2         2         2       1m

With the ingress service the EKS cluster is automatically creating an ELB load balancer and forward traffic to the two worker nodes:

Example application:

I have used a very simple Jenkins pipeline to create the AWS EKS cluster:

pipeline {
    agent any
    environment {
        AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = credentials('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID')
        AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = credentials('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY')
    }
    stages {
        stage('prepare workspace') {
            steps {
                sh 'rm -rf *'
                git branch: 'master', url: 'https://github.com/berndonline/aws-eks-terraform.git'
                sh 'terraform init'
            }
        }
        stage('terraform apply') {
            steps {
                sh 'terraform apply -auto-approve'
                sh 'terraform output kubeconfig > ./kubeconfig'
                sh 'terraform output config_map_aws_auth > ./config_map_aws_auth.yaml'
                sh 'export KUBECONFIG=./kubeconfig'
            }
        }
        stage('add worker nodes') {
            steps {
                sh 'kubectl apply -f ./config_map_aws_auth.yaml --kubeconfig=./kubeconfig'
                sh 'sleep 60'
            }
        }
        stage('deploy example application') {
            steps {    
                sh 'kubectl apply -f ./example/hello-kubernetes.yml --kubeconfig=./kubeconfig'
                sh 'kubectl get all --kubeconfig=./kubeconfig'
            }
        }
        stage('Run terraform destroy') {
            steps {
                input 'Run terraform destroy?'
            }
        }
        stage('terraform destroy') {
            steps {
                sh 'kubectl delete -f ./example/hello-kubernetes.yml --kubeconfig=./kubeconfig'
                sh 'sleep 60'
                sh 'terraform destroy -force'
            }
        }
    }
}

I really like how easy and quick it is to create an AWS EKS cluster in less than 15 mins.

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Getting started with OpenShift 4.0 Container Platform

I had a first look at OpenShift 4.0 and I wanted to share some information from what I have seen so far. The installation of the cluster is super easy and RedHat did a lot to improve the overall experience of the installation process to the previous OpenShift v3.x Ansible based installation and moving towards ephemeral cluster deployments.

There are a many changes under the hood and it’s not as obvious as Bootkube for the self-hosted/healing control-plane, MachineSets and the many internal operators to install and manage the OpenShift components ( api server, scheduler, controller manager, cluster-autoscaler, cluster-monitoring, web-console, dns, ingress, networking, node-tuning, and authentication ).

For the OpenShift 4.0 developer preview you need an RedHat account because you require a pull-secret for the cluster installation. For more information please visit: https://cloud.openshift.com/clusters/install

First we need to download the openshift-installer binary:

wget https://github.com/openshift/installer/releases/download/v0.16.1/openshift-install-linux-amd64
mv openshift-install-linux-amd64 openshift-install
chmod +x openshift-install

Then we create the install-configuration, it is required that you already have AWS account credentials and an Route53 DNS domain set-up:

$ ./openshift-install create install-config
INFO Platform aws
INFO AWS Access Key ID *********
INFO AWS Secret Access Key [? for help] *********
INFO Writing AWS credentials to "/home/centos/.aws/credentials" (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-configure-files.html)
INFO Region eu-west-1
INFO Base Domain paas.domain.com
INFO Cluster Name cluster1
INFO Pull Secret [? for help] *********

Let’s look at the install-config.yaml

apiVersion: v1beta4
baseDomain: paas.domain.com
compute:
- name: worker
  platform: {}
  replicas: 3
controlPlane:
  name: master
  platform: {}
  replicas: 3
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: ew1
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  machineCIDR: 10.0.0.0/16
  networkType: OpenShiftSDN
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  aws:
    region: eu-west-1
pullSecret: '{"auths":{...}'

Now we can continue to create the OpenShift v4 cluster which takes around 30mins to complete. At the end of the openshift-installer you see the auto-generate credentials to connect to the cluster:

$ ./openshift-install create cluster
INFO Consuming "Install Config" from target directory
INFO Creating infrastructure resources...
INFO Waiting up to 30m0s for the Kubernetes API at https://api.cluster1.paas.domain.com:6443...
INFO API v1.12.4+0ba401e up
INFO Waiting up to 30m0s for the bootstrap-complete event...
INFO Destroying the bootstrap resources...
INFO Waiting up to 30m0s for the cluster at https://api.cluster1.paas.domain.com:6443 to initialize...
INFO Waiting up to 10m0s for the openshift-console route to be created...
INFO Install complete!
INFO Run 'export KUBECONFIG=/home/centos/auth/kubeconfig' to manage the cluster with 'oc', the OpenShift CLI.
INFO The cluster is ready when 'oc login -u kubeadmin -p jMTSJ-F6KYy-mVVZ4-QVNPP' succeeds (wait a few minutes).
INFO Access the OpenShift web-console here: https://console-openshift-console.apps.cluster1.paas.domain.com
INFO Login to the console with user: kubeadmin, password: jMTSJ-F6KYy-mVVZ4-QVNPP

The web-console has a very clean new design which I really like in addition to all the great improvements.

Under administration -> cluster settings you can explore the new auto-upgrade functionality of OpenShift 4.0:

You choose the new version to upgrade and everything else happens in the background which is a massive improvement to OpenShift v3.x where you had to run the ansible installer for this.

In the background the cluster operator upgrades the different platform components one by one.

Slowly you will see that the components move to the new build version.

Finished cluster upgrade:

You can only upgrade from one version 4.0.0-0.9 to the next version 4.0.0-0.10. It is not possible to upgrade and go straight from x-0.9 to x-0.11.

But let’s deploy the Google Hipster Shop example and expose the frontend-external service for some more testing:

oc login -u kubeadmin -p jMTSJ-F6KYy-mVVZ4-QVNPP https://api.cluster1.paas.domain.com:6443 --insecure-skip-tls-verify=true
oc new-project myproject
oc create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berndonline/openshift-ansible/master/examples/hipster-shop.yml
oc expose svc frontend-external

Getting the hostname for the exposed service:

$ oc get route
NAME                HOST/PORT                                                   PATH      SERVICES            PORT      TERMINATION   WILDCARD
frontend-external   frontend-external-myproject.apps.cluster1.paas.domain.com             frontend-external   http                    None

Use the browser to connect to our Hipster Shop:

It’s also very easy to destroy the cluster as it is to create it, as you seen previously:

$ ./openshift-install destroy cluster
INFO Disassociated                                 arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:route-table/rtb-083e2da5d1183efa7" id=rtbassoc-01d27db162fa45402
INFO Disassociated                                 arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:route-table/rtb-083e2da5d1183efa7" id=rtbassoc-057f593640067efc0
INFO Disassociated                                 arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:route-table/rtb-083e2da5d1183efa7" id=rtbassoc-05e821b451bead18f
INFO Disassociated                                 IAM instance profile="arn:aws:iam::552276840222:instance-profile/ocp4-bgx4c-worker-profile" arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:instance/i-0f64a911b1ffa3eff" id=i-0f64a911b1ffa3eff name=ocp4-bgx4c-worker-profile role=ocp4-bgx4c-worker-role
INFO Deleted                                       IAM instance profile="arn:aws:iam::552276840222:instance-profile/ocp4-bgx4c-worker-profile" arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:instance/i-0f64a911b1ffa3eff" id=i-0f64a911b1ffa3eff name=0xc00090f9a8
INFO Deleted                                       arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:instance/i-0f64a911b1ffa3eff" id=i-0f64a911b1ffa3eff
INFO Deleted                                       arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:instance/i-00b5eedc186ba26a7" id=i-00b5eedc186ba26a7
...
INFO Deleted                                       arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:security-group/sg-016d4c7d435a1c97f" id=sg-016d4c7d435a1c97f
INFO Deleted                                       arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:subnet/subnet-076348368858e9a82" id=subnet-076348368858e9a82
INFO Deleted                                       arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:vpc/vpc-00c611ae1b9b8e10a" id=vpc-00c611ae1b9b8e10a
INFO Deleted                                       arn="arn:aws:ec2:eu-west-1:552276840222:dhcp-options/dopt-0ce8b6a1c31e0ceac" id=dopt-0ce8b6a1c31e0ceac

The install experience is great for OpenShift 4.0 which makes it very easy for everyone to create and get started quickly with an enterprise container platform. From the operational perspective I still need to see how to run the new platform because all the operators are great and makes it an easy to use cluster but what happens when one of the operators goes rogue and debugging this I am most interested in.

Over the coming weeks I will look into more detail around OpenShift 4.0 and the different new features, I am especially interested in Service Mesh.